Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

64 with Tom Libby in three,

two, one.

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast, episode number

64 with my regular co host,

now no longer semi regular, but regular co host Tom

Libby. And welcome.

Tom. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic.

If you're not watching this on the video, it's kind of hard to express, but

I'm already kind of, like, laughing a little bit here because I just think today's

topic is going to we are either going to divide your

audience dramatically between

the haves and the rights and the wrongs and all this other stuff,

or we're just going to be very entertaining for them. I haven't figured out which

yet. We're going to solve all the problems of the world in about the next

hour and a half, which is about the only time we've got today. So

we might not actually get to the end of the podcast today. We might actually

have to put a to be continued on the end of this

ellipsis and revisit some of the things in here

because today we are going to talk about the intersections

between the US Constitution,

the King James Bible, Andrew

Jackson, and the role of the civil

magistrate in a republic. This

is the kickoff to our month in July where we tend to focus

on the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and

what leaders can take from the founding documents of the United States,

which I consider to be and which many consider to be. I'm

not the only person here considered to be revolutionary documents

in their time, but also consider them to be

documents that have actually changed the nature of leadership,

not just at a governmental level, but at

a hierarchical level. In all manner of

ways between leaders and followers

has changed the nature of that relationship as

truly fundamental founding documents do.

So in the Bible there we're going to get into it. We're going to

kind of talk about Proverbs 23 and 24.

And like I said, we're going to talk about the role of a civil

magistrate and what that actually means. And this is weirdly

enough, a podcast episode that is going to drop after

episode number 65 where we talked about First Kings, Second Kings, First

Chronicles, and Second Chronicles. Yes, we're dropping them out of order. So I want you

to go and listen to episode 65 and then get

us in on episode 66 where we will be talking about or

not 66, 67, where we will be talking about

the US. Constitution more broadly beyond just the

14th Amendment and the role of leadership with that. So we're

kind of bringing some things together here and we're starting that with

this podcast today.

One of the things that we are going to really focus on, the narrow area

that we're going to focus on today in our conversation, and I'm going to quote

directly from the US. Constitution in just a moment, we're going to

talk about how do you put caesar back in the box,

because I do think that that is a fundamental question for our

time. When leaders get out of control, when they behave

somewhat I'm going to name a leader here that everybody knows. When they

behave somewhat Napoleonically, how do you ship them

off to elba, right? How do you make

sure that they stay in their lane? A

lot of the times on this podcast, we talk about leadership, self awareness, and how

leaders need to understand who they are and the lane that they are

in. But when a leader gets out of control, how do you put that

leader in the box? Back in the box? And whose responsibility

is it to do that? And there is no better example of

the checks and balances that are placed on leaders, I think, in the

world today than the contemporary

and even the pre contemporary united States of

America. And I quote directly

from the US. Constitution, the 14th amendment,

section one, which is really the only section you really

mean. All persons born or naturalized in the United

States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the

United States and of the state wherein they reside.

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the

privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall

any state deprive any person of life, liberty,

or property without due process of

law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction

the equal protection of the laws.

Close quote from the US. Constitution, section

one, 14th amendment.

We are only a few days away from the celebration of independence

day in the United States, the day that Thomas Jefferson, a noted

deus, penned the famous words, we hold these truths to be self

evident, that all men are created equal.

Oddly enough, or maybe interestingly enough,

four score and seven years later, on July

4, at 1863, at a place called gettysburg,

northern troops from Massachusetts, most notably, where tom Libby hails

from, led by Joseph chamberlain, held

the high ground at gettysburg and

probably reserved the union.

They and the southern troops who opposed them

finally

preserved in blood the argument that jefferson made

in principle, and they did it

in the mud of pennsylvania.

It's really hard when you think about the civil war to root for the, quote,

unquote, bad guys. But I'm that guy.

And that's not to say I root for the south, and that's

not even to say that I root for the southern argument. The southern argument was

full of holes, but

secession acts of secession, acts of leaving

right are radically enshrined in the declaration of independence

as well. And we read from the 14th amendment. Well, the 14th amendment was

specifically added to the constitution after the

civil war because, quite frankly,

african americans in this country. The descendants of African

slaves were still underneath

systems where they could be deprived of their life, their

liberty, their property without due process of the law because they were

believed to be less than.

But let us not merely focus on race. There have been issues

around this with class. There have been issues around

this between men and women in our country. And of

course, speaking of Andrew Jackson, there have been

issues between those individuals who immigrated here and those

individuals who really immigrated here.

And so it's hard to make an

argument for the opposite side, right? It's hard to make an

argument for secession because in our time,

the cause of the Southern troops today is merely labeled as treasonous and then placed

in a box and forgotten or thrown away. And the

arguments for Southern secession, the arguments that they made based on states

rights are dismissed by the same people in our time.

We even seek now to rename schools and monuments and

tear down statues of the men who opposed the Northern troops in the Civil

War. Matter of fact, in the town that I live in here in Texas,

there is a statue of a general who was a battalion commander.

The county is named after him, by the way.

And he died at Gettysburg like a lot of

Southerners did. And I don't think he was fighting for

slaves. Matter of fact, when you look into that guy's history, he

didn't own one.

When you think about that

without emotion, which is really hard, there

is no greater example in our country the Civil War

is no greater example of how far average people must be willing to

strive to check the power of the civil magistrate even if the civil

magistrate is Abraham Lincoln. Right?

And to try to put Caesar back in the box to try to

try to contain leadership when it appears to be getting out of

control. This is

especially interesting in a country that ostensibly has a constitution and

where Caesar serves a piece of paper in a

republic rather than serving him or herself.

We need raw, robust thinking in our time about these areas. And we

need to drain some of the emotion from

events that occurred over well over

170 years ago. Knocking on the door of a hundred

no, knocking on the door of 200 years ago pretty soon here.

We need to be able to drain emotion from those events,

but we can't. And I think we can't because

we are struggling at a human level inside of this republic we have

built. We are struggling with the

idea of how to ensure life, liberty, property

and due process of the law while also

acknowledging the reality of a hierarchical

structure and of leaders that have egos, leaders that have

hubris, leaders that have arrogance and leaders that can sometimes get out of

control. So

with all of that being said, the sort of

ground being laid there I already wound up Tom a little bit

and told him where we're going today.

But let's start off with that. Tom,

does the enemy get a vote? Like, does the person

opposing you, do they actually have a legitimate

strain in their argument? Can we acknowledge that in our

polarized culture today? Or are we all on the side

of angels? And there are no demons. We're all just on the side of angels

together.

So the first question you ask me is literally like a

loaded gun here.

Ready, fire. Aim. Right. Yeah.

This is a really interesting topic for me. Right. And then

I think it's very interesting where you look at

probably like the maybe early

ninety s, right. When our political landscape was

a bit different in the sense that

you could live in a state like Massachusetts and being Republican and not worried

about your house getting thrown eggs at every day. Right.

Where today I know a lot of Republicans in the state of

Massachusetts won't even admit they're Republican when they're in mixed crowds.

Just for those who don't know if you don't know, Massachusetts

is an extremely liberal state. I mean, we're probably

one of the farthest left states that is in the country. Maybe us in

California, I think, are probably the two.

So for you to be for the. Population

about 85%, to be that far

left, you just don't talk about it. If you're a Republican, you just keep

it to yourself and you vote and you go about it. Right. Because

kind of kind of to your question about because

we can't seem to have a difference of opinion anymore.

The idea of us disagreeing, shaking hands and walking

away as friends is nonexistent today where it was when I was a

kid, when the political landscape was a little bit

I'll just use the word calmer. I don't know if that's the right word, but

there were more middle of the road people and lean

Republican. Like, I lean Democrat, I lean toward

Republican, but I really feel like a middle of the road.

So that doesn't seem to exist anymore. A lot of our middle of the road

people are forced to choose and kind of just stay on that

side. So to your question, I know this is a really

roundabout kind of answer to your question, but

in today's society, I don't think the enemy gets a vote. I think 30 years

ago maybe they did. And I'm not sure if we're better off for it or

not. That part I don't know. But if history tells us

anything, that usually this is

probably my favorite quote from any attorney or lawyer that I've ever heard in

my lifetime in any kind of compromise. If both parties

are happy, something went wrong. If both parties

are miserable, something went right. If one party

is happy and one party is miserable, then you didn't do your job right.

To the point is when you're compromising in these

situations, then you should not walk away from the table happy that you had to

compromise, but you

should be able to look across the table and see, quote unquote, your enemy however

you want to word this and at least see another human being

and realize that they're not happy either. And if you're both not happy, then

something went right. And I don't think that exists in today's world right

now. Well, and see, this is again, when you read literature,

I don't care if the literature is governmental founding documents or the

hobbit, right. I don't care what we're reading. Right.

Okay. I'll use the founding documents as an example.

King George II

thought he had a legitimate reason

to hold the the

colonies of the United States, which was the United States at the

time, but to hold the North American colonies in his grasp. He believed

he had a legitimate argument. He got a vote.

Jefferson list in the Declaration of Independence.

I know because we read it on the podcast. He lists all

of the things that they

are opposed to and he even says in the text,

we've sought redress. We've tried to fix this. Right?

We've tried to use the systems that we have in

place, and we've been ignored. We've had these

responses and reactions. We've had escalation, and now we're

done. We're out of the game.

But at the end of it, he writes something that's very, very

interesting, basically says that we can

be friends at the end of this. We just can't be in a relationship

together anymore.

It's the ultimate. It's the ultimate. It's

not you, it's me.

Which by the way, so there's one thing missing

from your intro here too. You're talking

about the documentation of

the Constitution, its influence from the King James Bible.

But Native Americans had a very strong influence into

the founding principles of our country. I

shouldn't say most people I hope everybody knows this by now, but sometimes

people it's not really that common of knowledge,

but the indigenous people that were here

used a very similar form of government than we have today.

And by the way, the checks and balances were also there. It was just different.

Right? So you had a chief that gained too much power,

and they thought that he needed to be knocked

down a peg. It was actually done by the elder women. So the elder women

would basically hold a private council session with the

chief and be like, listen, either you, either you cut this out or you're gone.

We're going to replace you with somebody else. And the elder women had the authority

to do that. So it was a council of elder women. But that

check and balance kept even chiefs

that Europeans were mistaking for kings

and situations like that. They thought they had the same power that

they were used to in Europe, but they didn't. And the way in

which we communicated was very similar to what you see in Congress today, where

we had talking sticks and talking feathers and things like that, where only one person

is allowed to talk so you can't over talk somebody else that is holding that

feather. There was councils divided, meaning not divided in

arguments, but certain councils handled certain things. You'd

have a council for war, a council for

trade, a lot of these

principles. Now granted, the Founding Fathers, in my

opinion, did do a very nice job

going deeper and really,

I'll say penciling out some formality to all of

this, but a lot of people forget that these

foundational principles come from something they encountered

here. This wasn't something they invented. It wasn't something that they

saw or something that they came up with. It was something that they saw

and they were interacting with at the time well. And I only think it

works. And one of our guests, who we'll have on the podcast this month, derolo

Nixon. He's our friend of the show. He's a lawyer,

constitutional guy, very

deeply well read. Good friend of the show. Had him on last year during the

month of July to talk about the Constitution and, of course, the Federalist Papers, which

were the arguments for the Constitution and the anti Federalist Papers, which

were the arguments against. One of the points

that Derolo makes is that

you would not have had the Constitution and you would not have had that understanding

of what they were seeing in the Iroquois

Confederation and in other places, which is what you're talking about.

You wouldn't have had that understanding from the Founding Fathers and from the people

who came before them who, when they showed up, they recognized this without

having an understanding of the Magna Carta coming

in, right? And so they brought that idea

that and this is a radically revolutionary idea and

this is why I use the term Caesar for the vast majority

of human history. Leaders are leaders.

They have all the power, they're the monarch, they do what they want.

What is it the Greeks used to say? The strong do what they will and

the weak suffer what they must. And that's it, right?

Raw power. Except even in those

times the raw power didn't work. But let's just take that as a broad brush

generality of leadership in human history.

The Magna Cartar is the first time. And there might have been times

in China, there might have been times in India, but those

times either are not recorded or are not known to us. In the West, I'm

sure we were not the Western world wasn't the

only we're the only human beings that came up with this idea. So I'm going

to put that caveat around it. But in the west, the Magna Carta is the

first time where elements of the Bible come in

and they are looked at and

that divine right of kings thing is

checked and the monarch is

told both by the church and by average people,

you need to go back in a box, buddy. You're way too far out

of the boundaries. And then the principle of that

you are not above the law. If you create the law,

it's the practice what you preach kind of situation. Right, right,

yeah. Even I am not above the law. There are rules even on this

show. Even I am not above the rules.

Now, sometimes leaders will use that to

hide in bureaucratic laziness. You get a

lot of that. So if you go and you're interacting with a civil

structure, particularly a civil service structure, this happens in

Texas. I know for sure it happens in Massachusetts in every other state I've ever

lived in. But you go and you ask for a bureaucrat to do something for

you and they will hide behind that. Even I'm not above, I can't

not my job or my personal favorite is what are you going to

do? It's the rules. And you go, you made them

1000 years. Yeah.

So that could be both a cudgel and an escape all at the same

time. But that idea, that core idea that there should be

rules and that the King or Caesar is not above the

box that they've constructed for everybody else,

is what then leads to this idea in the

14th Amendment of equal protection. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going

to say the thing I find interesting. You referenced the

Magna Carter. Was that 1215? Right.

So you referenced the Magna Carter that says you're not above the law.

But back then when they wrote the law, the law was the law.

There was nothing to challenge it. Whereas again, with our founding fathers, they had the

foresight to say even the laws are not

above the law. Meaning just because we write it into law

doesn't mean that somebody else shouldn't be able to challenge it and make sure that

it makes sense for the people. Right? Hence the Supreme Court.

We don't have to talk about them right now because God only knows that they're

fallible amongst themselves, but we don't have to talk about that.

We're going to hit that on another episode at a later date.

But the idea, the concept anyway, makes perfect sense that

says if we write this law and it doesn't make sense for the people, the

people have an avenue in which to challenge the law because the law itself is

not above the law. That whole concept,

again, it was just brilliant at the time. And they put in

paper and put in practice and in principle

in writing what they were witnessing. Right. So that was the one

difference. Right. So us as a people, and for those of you who don't know,

I am native, so I can speak to this a lot deeper if you

ever want to, but we didn't write this stuff down. We didn't have

that mechanism in place. It was such traditionalized

that it was embedded in our culture, so that we just did it. It was

like we just did it, and we acted on it. And it was never but

we had the same thing. We had the same idea or concept of just

because somebody makes a rule or just because the rule is

today, doesn't mean that that rule is going to be different tomorrow, or doesn't mean

that it can't be. Things are there

to adapt and proceed with you in order. We knew that our

population was growing and we were marrying out. Even

our sphere of influence was changing based on where our daughters went, where our

sons went. So it had to change with that right. So we already

knew all that, but we didn't write it down. And our founding

fathers did a good job. I give them at least a little credit for

that when it came to us. I give them

a little credit when the fact that they put to pen and paper

what we were doing in practice, and traditionalizing that they put it

into real into real practice, like into. Real pen and

paper. Well, speaking of interpretation,

but the 14th. Amendment specifically, by the way,

I just want to make sure that your listeners know, I do, that the 14th

amendment did not apply to us. There is section

three in there. Where doesn't matter. We weren't considered

citizens until 1924 with the indian citizen act.

Right? Let's get into that. All right.

No, we're going to get into that right now, because I have a piece

that I would like to read to you here. I'm an interpretation of the

14th amendment from the national constitution center by brian

t. Fritz patrick and theodore m. Shaw. And by the way,

we'll have links to the national constitution center. We'll have links to all of this

stuff, all these references that we are making in the

show notes below the player for this episode.

So from the national constitution center, a common interpretation of

the 14th amendment. They're going to hit on some of this. Tom, you're going to

love this. Ratified as it was after the civil war in

1868, there is little doubt what the equal protection clause was

intended to do stop states from discriminating against blacks.

But the text of the clause is worded very broadly, and it has come a

long way from its original purpose. For example, despite its reference

to states, the clause has been read into the fifth amendment to

prevent the federal government from discriminating as well.

Near the end of the 19th century, the court considered whether racial segregation by the

government violated the constitution if people were separated into different

facilities by race. But those facilities were purportedly equally

suitable, did that constitute discrimination?

Historians have debated whether the 14th amendment was intended to end such

segregation, but in plesi v. Ferguson, the court ruled

by a seven to one vote that so called separate but equal facilities in that

case train cars for blacks and whites did not violate the Equal

Protection Clause. The decision cemented into place

racist Jim Crow era laws. In a famous

dissent, justice John Marshall Harlan disagreed, stating, quote,

our Constitution is colorblind. End quote. Plesy remained the law of the land

until 1954, when it was overruled in Brown versus Board of Education.

The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the reasoning of Plesi and held that separate

schools for blacks and whites violated the Protection Clause. Brown

was a decisive turning point in a decades long struggle to

dismantle governmentally opposed segregation, not only in schools, but throughout American

society. Brown was a turning point, but it was not the end of the struggle.

For example, it was not until 1967, in Loving versus Virginia that

the Supreme Court held that laws prohibiting interracial marriages violated

equal protection. Although the original purpose was

to protect blacks from discrimination, the broad wording has led the Supreme Court to hold

that all racial discrimination pache tom's

point here, including against whites, Hispanics, Asians and

Native Americans is constitutionally suspect.

These holdings have led to an ongoing debate for the last several decades over whether

it is unconstitutional for governments to consider the race of blacks, Hispanics and

Native Americans as a positive factor in university

admissions, employment and government contracting. We will address

this question in our separate statements. The Supreme

Court has also used the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit discrimination on other

bases besides race. Most laws are assessed under so

called rational basis scrutiny. Here, any plausible and

legitimate reason for the discrimination is sufficient to render it

constitutional. But laws that rely on so called suspect

classifications are assessed under heightened scrutiny here. The government must

have important or compelling reasons to justify the discrimination, and the discrimination

must be carefully tailored to serve those reasons. What types of

classifications are suspect. In light of the history of the Equal Protection Clause,

it is no surprise that race and national origin are suspect classifications. But the

Court has also held that gender, immigration status and wedlock

status at birth qualify as suspect

classifications. The Court has rejected arguments that age and

poverty should be elevated to suspect classifications.

One of the greatest controversies regarding the Equal Protection Clause today is whether the

Court should find that sexual orientation is a suspect classification.

In its recent same sex marriage opinion, Obergefeld

versus Hodges, that was 2015 the Court suggested that discrimination

against gays and lesbians can violate the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court did

not decide what level of scrutiny should apply, leaving this question

for another day. Like many

constitutional provisions, the Equal Protection Clause continues to be

in flux. Close quote.

Now, we are recording this

in July of 2023, where

and we got to frame this the Supreme Court recently

struck down affirmative action

as a factor in admission to higher

education institutions. We will cover

that issue in a separate podcast later on. We're not going to cover that

today. As Tom was saying earlier, that's way too broad, and

I don't want to delve that deeply into the Supreme Court on this podcast

today. Instead, I want to make a

point here.

The Equal Protection clause continues to be in flux, just like all of

the other clauses in the Constitution are in

flux. And this is because the tension between the words of the Declaration

of Independence and the facts of the reality of the dynamics

between people of different races, different classes, and different

abilities has always been hard to navigate in a

country as bold as the United States. This is a bold

experiment, and we don't often

well, it's really hard to understand

how strange it is in other people's houses if you don't go

live there. All you see when you're in your own house is the mess that

you're surrounded by. You don't see how special it is

to hold the truths that were stated in the

Declaration of Independence as being self evident. To hold these truths as being something to

fight and die for, we must be able to acknowledge, and this is something huge

a Creator who is eternal transcendent and probably more

moral than us not probably more moral than us,

and will give us justice, by the way.

And the civil magistrate in our system, our republic, such as it

were, must acknowledge and be humble in the face of that

creator we just talked about, the Magna Carta. That was huge,

right? And when the government established by

flawed people no longer acknowledges a transcendent creator in

action, forget the lip service of words, which is what many

folks in our country are worried about today, that government

is well on its way to becoming tyrannical.

Because when there's nobody higher than Caesar

or there's nobody higher than the magistrate, what have you

got? And that tension

between the reality of what is actually being

walked out on the ground and the vision of the United

States may be too great, maybe too hard,

maybe too hard,

too tight for leaders to grasp and hold on

to.

This is also the spot where you get into

the idea, and Tom sort of brought it up, and I want to explore this

a little bit with him now of the leader

deciding what rules he's going to follow and what ones he's

not. So

let's start there. If I'm

leading people, forget a country that's too complicated.

There's 315,000,000 people in this country. Let me go on record, I never want

to be president, ever. Same, by the

way, ever. Zero interest in that office.

Now, mayor, mayor, mayor, town. I could handle

that. Look, mayor is a very easy job. You put up a light,

people yell at you in the local diner, and you go home. Are you

done? The mayor

of the town that I lived in, that I live in right now. In

Texas. I'll tell this small anecdote so I was

out last week with my wife and my youngest son, and we're

having dinner or whatever, and the mayor of the town

is in the restaurant, right? And he's sitting at the bar, he's drinking with whatever.

It's fine, I don't care. And I pointed him out to my son. Now

my youngest boy is six, so

I pointed him out to him. I was like, that's the mayor. Now, there's a

great book that I used to read to him when he was a little little

kid called Little Blue Truck. It's

a rhyming book, of course. And inside of Little Blue Truck, there's a character called

the Mayor until like, the little blue truck goes to the town and the

mayor rides around the back of the little blue truck and then stands up and

gives a speech. And you always say in the rhyming dog

oral of the story, the mayor

stepped out. That's kind of how I think of it. And

I kind of said that to him a little bit and he's like, oh, that's

the mayor. Anyway, so he got really excited about that because he's six, right? He

thinks that means something. It does for a six year old,

anyway, sitting over there and I'm eating and we get our food and

all that. And to make a boring story

interesting, not a long story short, but a boring story interesting, the mayor

walks over and shakes my hand and he

starts talking to me and asking me how work is going. And he introduces himself

to my wife and he's like, oh, and who's this young man right here? And

I was like, this is and I said my son's name and I

introduced my son to the mayor. And after he walked out, he looked at me

like, you've met a celebrity. That's what

you need right there. That's the level of civil

government. That's the heights I would like to hit. I don't want to be

president. I want to be mayor. I want to make some six year old kids

life happy for like 5 seconds, by

the way, just to go completely be completely transparent.

I did not vote for that gentleman, nor did I campaign for him.

But he's a fine guy. I don't have a problem with him.

The idea that

we can, in a

republic, hold our

leaders accountable, right,

and that they are not above the rules that they create is

critical and is crucial. But what's even more crucial

is, I think, how we actually

practically do that

and having the courage to be able to do that. So how do we have

the courage to be able to do that? Let's start with that because that's into

some other things. I think it's funny that you brought up your son, because

I think if you boil it down even further,

you got the rulers of countries, but then you

come down to the mayor, and then you got family units, right? Right. So if

you think about it, all the same rules apply, right? I'm

the dad, my wife's the mom, and we're not above the rules either, right? But

every once in a while, we break them. And if your kid calls you out

on it, you better have a pretty damn good answer as to why you broke

the rules. And then it gives you an opportunity to teach them

that. Again, like I said earlier, not every rule is

established to be a permanent rule forever and ever and ever until

the end of human existence. In the

leadership roles, there are times where you

simply have no choice, right? Like, you have a rule in

your company that nobody pays an invoice on time, right?

I don't know. I'm just making something up, right? So we have terms for a

reason, and they give us 30 days, and I want you to pay it on

the 31st day. I don't care what the whatever. And then

the owner of the company comes in and goes, no, this bill needs to be

paid, like, today, right now. But it says we have until

30 more days to pay it. It doesn't matter. Pay it right now. But you're

going against your own rule. I just need you to pay rent.

So if you're going to do that,

like our founding fathers, you have to have just cause, right? You have you have

to be able to refer to something that gives your employee

the the acknowledgment that they were

right to challenge you, that they were

right to ask you those questions, but you still need them

to do it, and here's why. But you need to be able to

you can't just say, because I said so, especially in today's day and

age, you can't just go to the employee and say, pay this invoice. Well, you

said that our company policy says this. I don't

care, I'm in charge. It's my company. Pay the invoice. That's the end of it.

Because I said so. I'm

assuming there are plenty of leaders that do that. The problem is you

shouldn't if you then say to that employee, you know what? You're absolutely

right, and I think maybe we need to revisit this policy,

but for now, I need you to pay the invoice anyway. Let me explain why

we have this upcoming blah, blah, blah. This company is going to be a

sponsor, but they're not going to be a sponsor unless we pay our invoice

quickly. Blah, blah, blah. I'm thinking of like, the hub spots of the world that

have these big conferences or whatever, right?

But I'm trying to fit it into a box

here for the podcast purposes, and

it could be a multitude of things. I'm just picking one that I think is

the easiest to explain. But the reality of it is

you as a leader have to know

going to that employee already and asking them to

do that, that you should. And here's the other thing, too. You

should expect them to challenge that or at least ask the question.

And if they don't, that's a different problem altogether, right? Like now you

have a different problem from your company's perspective, from a leadership perspective.

Well, there's dynamics between where does authority come from,

right? Yeah. We haven't really talked about that on this podcast, but

this is good because we've

determined you talk about larger structures and they're breaking it down

into like simple ones, right, like going from president to the family. Okay, yeah,

great. So I'm going to go from the west to individuals. Right.

In the west broadly, we've determined that authority comes

from and this is why we read books on this podcast comes from the

word that goes all the way down deep into the Bible

and other stuff that's all the way down deep. At

the cornerstones of Western culture, we

determine that words, language, speech, this is why freedom of

speech is a real thing, right,

that needs to be protected. And I'm not just talking about spoken

words, I'm talking about written words. Right. We determine that the written word

gives authority. Okay. After that, you can get

into all kinds of different things. Who writes the word? What kind of power do

they have? Yada. Yada. But the word is the thing. Okay,

well, if the word is the thing and then you're in a

family unit and you said the word and your kid

gets you and you've had this experience, you've been a parent long enough. I've been

a parent long enough where I've caught myself going, well, because I said so,

not okay,

you're going to wind up in a problem because what you're doing then

is then you're saying the word wasn't good enough.

And what you're doing is you're sliding in authority there. And there

are other cultures of the world that do operate off of authority, which is purely

just I said this and

I am the measure of that word. Right. But

we don't have that in our society.

I won't say we don't have that. We do have that, but we are struggling

mightily to push past that. And I think that's something

that is unique. You had a point. Well, no, I was just going to

say when I was a kid, I heard a statement that always made me

cringe a little bit because it lends

to the definition, right. So

they said to me, the difference between right and wrong is

the majority.

Think about that though, right? If the majority of people vote some

wackadoo in office, we're stuck with that president for the next four years

unless they try to impeach him, get him out of office. Which we all know

how well that works, but anyway.

Apparently how well it works not once, but twice.

Yeah, right.

To get back to when your kid calls you on the carpet

about something. As a parent, I learned very, very quickly. I

learned very quickly how to handle that, right? So

the first time my son did it and he's my oldest, first time my son

did it, I was like, I didn't know what to say. I was frazzled. And

I was like, Listen, you just got to do it. You got to do it.

I don't have time for this right now. You just got to do it, right?

Right? Then as I encounter this more frequently, I came

up with this thing saying, you're right. I'm glad you called me on it, but

I don't have time to explain it to you right this second. I just need

you to do it for now and remind me later, and we'll talk about it,

right? And then in my brain, I'm thinking 50 50 shot whether or not the

kid remembers to ask me about it.

If they don't, fine. I just let it go. And if they do, great. Then

we'll have a conversation about how things change things in

life, change your life's never going to be the same. Rules have to change. Go

with the flow. I have those conversations with them if they remember to ask

me. But anyway, that's a little off

topic for this podcast, I think. But no, that's

actually a really good tip for leaders. Like, you got to buy yourself some

time. Sometimes you're in a high pressure situation.

Sometimes

you need your word followed, right?

By the way, that also you talk about being a 50 50

shot. I think it's a 50 50 shot of whether or not

that kid trusts you enough to come back and

loves you enough to come back because you've done the hard work

before of establishing that relationship. But I agree.

Let's say the leader does that hard work. If you're doing the hard work of

establishing the relationship before you've established trust, now, that works

because now you got a baseline to work from.

But if you're new into a leadership role

and your options

are do what I told you to do because I told you to do it,

or what Tom's option is, which is,

yes, do what I told you to do right now. I understand we're in a

time crunch, but come back and talk to me later. Take

number two. And then I

would add on to that. Don't wait for them to follow up with you. I

was going to say that. Follow up with them. You go follow up with them,

because if you wait for them now, you're missing the opportunity

to build trust. And I would even say one step beyond that,

because you just preface that by saying if you're a new leader. I would say

regardless of whether you're a new leader or not, even if you're an established leader

who has trust built with that person, you should still take the initiative

to go back to them and do that anyway. I still

believe that. Now, one other thing, because I

wanted to touch on this. You kind of brought it up a little bit. We

talked about getting into equal protection.

The US. Constitution begins with the

statement, in order to form a more perfect union. I love

that, by the way. More perfect. Not we are perfect.

Not. We're kind of sort of okay. Not.

No, we're hanging out here. No, we're going to go towards more

perfection. These guys knew how

to set a vision, right? Yeah.

And, by the way, knew how to set a vision understanding the

fallibility of human beings and the frailty of human beings. And the

possibility that to Benjamin Franklin's point

after the Declaration of Independence came

out, when he was

asked by someone very famous, quote

or no, it was a constitution. After the

arguments about the Constitution have been concluded

in Philadelphia

when asked by somebody, what is it that you've got? You said, well,

we've got a republic if we can keep it.

They didn't think the experiment was going to hold together. They'd

be and I've held this position for many, many years,

I think Jefferson, Hamilton,

Franklin, Washington, I think all those old

boys, they'd be shocked that we got as

far as we did. I agree with that. I

think one thing, again you're missing. There was the

predecessor, the Constitutional Congress. They

thought that was all right. They actually thought that people were going to just

gravitate back toward that. That's why they

thought this was going to this experiment was going to fail, because they thought they

already had it. Right. Right. Exactly. As we know they

didn't. They did. Well, they did. Now the forward thinking.

But I think that we are also in this

spot where and we'll talk about this a little bit later on in

the podcast towards the end of our show today, but I think we're in this

spot where we're at the beginning of

a third founding, I think. And it's taken me a long time to kind of

get to this idea, because we're in one of those 80 year transitional moments that

happens every 80 years in our country where all the political

parties talk about being in Massachusetts, and there's only, like, 15% of you who are

Republicans and 85% of you who are Democrats. We're

in the midst of a transitional shift. The political

parties are shifting around. The culture is shifting around.

I see the two most recent Supreme Court decisions. And it's not just those two,

it's a whole series of Supreme Court decisions going back at

least ten to 15 years now, where

I think we are the generation and

I've actually been talking about this with a couple of people we are the generation,

I think, not the one that will see the next turn. We won't

live that long, but we're laying the foundation for that next turn to

work. And that's kind of one of the reasons why I do this podcast and

the way that I do it. It's why I read these books and talk about

this with Tom and the way that I do and other guest co hosts on

the show, because I do think that we're the generation that lays that foundation.

I think we're in the midst of that right now. I could feel something shifting

around in the cultural zeitgeist, and it might just be my own

delusion, I'll grant you that. It might very well be that. I might be delusional.

Everything might be going off the rails, and we might be entirely going off the

cliff, but I don't think so.

I think there's been something that's unstated that's going on in our culture right now

that we're we're kind of making a decision about which direction we're going to go,

and it's 315,000,000 people. And to

Tom's point about equal protection. So I want to close this loop on here because

I want to get his comments on this. Equal protection means equal

protection. We didn't get this

right from the founding, by the

way, in the Anti Federalist Papers.

They knew they screwed up on the slavery thing.

They knew they were not under any illusions that they

had somehow solved this problem. They just thought,

this is a fight we can't have right now, so we're going to push

it off for another day. Not maybe human beings will get better, not maybe

we'll be less fallible. We'll push it off for another day,

and at some point we're going to have it. Matter of fact, one

person in the Anti Federalist Papers

judge, he says

basically God deals out judgment and justice to nations, because

that's who God does that. Human beings don't do that. God does that. God deals

out justice to nations, and he will deal out justice to us

for this. And apparently all the Southern reps at

the Constitutional

Convention basically sat mute.

Interesting. Okay. They're like, oh, okay, yeah, it probably will happen that

way.

Right, yeah, you're right. But we don't care. Yeah, we don't care. What are you

going to do? What are you going to do? Let us go. We're going to

go right back to England. Then, like, South Carolina.

South Carolina? North Carolina. Carolinas would have gone back. They would have taken Virginia with

them, which at the time talk about Massachusetts. Virginia and

Massachusetts were the two sort of that was back when Massachusetts was more

connected to Maine, but they were the two kind of giant

lodestone, sort of sort of twin pillars.

Right? Which is why it's interesting that Joshua Chamberlain holds little

round top at Gettysburg against

the hordes from, interestingly enough, Texas.

Interesting, those Texas boys charged that hill multiple times.

Yes, they did. And they didn't get to the top

of it, but it was a miracle because his left flank almost

entirely, completely collapsed. And if it had

been, perhaps this conversation would be happening in a totally different

environment, equal

protection. Like you

said, you're an advocate for Native

American rights and Native American

justice. Obviously, there are strong feelings

about this. I'm an African American guy, right? I'm a black

guy. We're a black guy. To Native American guy having this conversation

both, by the way, not knocking the country, but in

praise of the country, right? How do we

as minorities navigate this tension? Because that's always the thing. It's that

49%, right? The ones who aren't the 51%, the ones

who didn't get recognized, right? The ones who weren't

maybe necessarily in the original promise. Martin Luther King Jr. Talks about this too,

but I'd be curious to know how do you navigate that tension

as a leader? Or how do you navigate that tension just in thinking about these

issues?

Yikes. Well, that's the second load of gun I had you

during the episode today. So here's an interesting thing,

right?

You might understand this better if I do it this way, right?

Okay. One of the things that I get very frustrated with,

and for those of you who are listening to here, you can't

see but if you're watching the podcast on the video, you can see that

in the Native community, I am what we call past for

white, right? So if you didn't know any better and you walked

by me on the street, you would just assume I was some Anglo Saxon

whatever, right? I don't even know, because quite honestly, I can't compare myself

to other people and say I look Italian or Irish or English or Scottish or

whatever. Honestly, I have no idea. I would take your word for it. If you

said I looked more Irish than English or English than French or whatever, I'd be

like, okay, because I really don't care, right? But

what I get frustrated on is when I have the conversation with people

and they before they know I

am of Native descent and we're talking for

some reason, somehow I get into conversations about Native either

culture or law or whatever before the

topic of who I am even comes up. Eventually they stop

me and they go, well, why is this so important to you? And I go,

oh, I probably should have mentioned I am Native. And they go, oh,

really? They really get puzzled when they look at me and they say that. And

I go, Why would you question that? I don't understand. Why

are we the only race in our country that

gets questioned about the validity of who we are? We're the only ones.

If you turned to somebody and said, I'm Dominican, they'd be

like, okay.

If you said I'm half Mexican and half

Nigerian, they'd go, okay. If you told

somebody that your parents both came from England,

so technically you're a dual citizen. You are also an English citizen, they'd

go, oh, that's cool. But as soon as a Native person says they're native. They

go, oh, really? Are you sure about that? You don't look native. How do I

know that you're Native? And it really baffles me about this, number one. Number

two. So I try to explain this to people in the best way I can,

which is your assumptions of what Native

people are or are not or what they look like and what they do not

look like are simply based on preconceived

notions. My guess is from Hollywood, right? Because

at some point back in the early days of Hollywood, native people

didn't even play our we didn't even play ourselves in movies, right? We were being

played by Italians and the spaghetti Westerns and all that other

stuff. Somebody had the idea, the foresight to say, hey, here's

an idea. Why don't we just go get some Native people and let them play

Native roles? But what ended up happening was they got the same

Native people to play every role in the Native community, which

means the guy who played a Navajo Code

Talker is the same guy that's playing Squanto, which is

up here in the Northeast, in Massachusetts. So now we're just

assuming that every Native look like Squanto and the Navajo Code

Talker, they all look like that. And the reality of it was

and I tell people this all the time, I ask people, this is my favorite

part. Let me get this straight.

Your concept or your idea, somebody that lived for

thousands of years here in the Northeast looks the same way as somebody who

lived for thousands of years in the Southwest desert.

Do you have the same idea or concept of Africa? Because if you

look at the continent of Africa, people that live in the northern parts of Africa

do not look the same as the people who look in the central parts of

Africa or the southern parts of Africa. There is

skin tone differences, there's facial feature, feature

differences. They're just not the same people. We

come to that conclusion, and we understand that, and we accept that, but we don't

here in the US. For some strange reason, we just have a hard time. Now,

mind you, my people come from here in the Northeast,

southeastern Canada, northeastern United States. We had pretty light

skin. We were covered nine months out of the year because

it was cold. And by the way, we had

just recently had an ice age, right? Yeah.

Our skin tones were not the same as the tones that you see

in the Southwest, which were a little bit darker, a little bit more bronze.

Again, if you take the continent of Africa into consideration.

So I say all that because I think that we get

discriminated on without people even realizing it. When

people treat me as if they just see me,

I don't like that. I don't like the fact that and you could talk

about whatever, privilege and white whatever, and they're like

because I've actually had people say to me, well, what do you care? It benefits

you, right? It benefits you that people treat you white or that you

look white or whatever, and I go, oh, contrem or FRE. No,

it doesn't benefit me the way that I want to be treated. It doesn't benefit

me to be treated differently than my expectation is or

to be treated I don't like it, right? So to your

protection on the law thing, you're not supposed to see lady Liberty

is blind or Lady Justice is blind, right? Like, we're not supposed to

see any of this stuff, so why does it still matter?

But it does. It still matters. And not only does it matter to us from

that perspective, but I referenced this earlier earlier here,

that the 14th Amendment didn't do anything for us, right?

It didn't do anything for us because we were not naturalized, and we were not

considered U. S. Citizens until 1924, which I also find

funny, by the way, because in 1924, they said, oh, we're gonna

we're gonna say that you're citizens, but

we're not gonna we we want you to be US. Citizens.

So everything that makes you native, we're going to take away from you. I.

E. The Carlisle schools and the boarding schools and all that other stuff, you

know, things like General general Sheridan saying, the only good Indian is a dead

Indian, or other people saying, you know, to to,

you know, to save the man, you have to kill the Indian. There's all kinds

of stuff out there like that. It wasn't until 1964

with the Native American Bill of Rights Act that we got some of those same

freedoms freedom of speech, freedom to due process, freedom. All that stuff came in

1964, by the way. One that was

excluded in that was the freedom of religion. That didn't come until

1978. So we weren't even

allowed to practice our own religion until 1978.

Again, this ties into that whole, like, more perfect

union, because you can go

minority group by minority group by minority group in this country.

And there is a litany of, to paraphrase from the

Declaration of Independent Independence, usurpations and abuses

that have been foisted on minority group after minority group after minority

group in our country, and yet

I am not aware of any minority group

yours, mine, or any others that's voting with their feet to go

someplace else. Agreed.

Right. Years

ago, when I was in college, years ago, an

African student, actually interestingly, from Sierra

Leone, he was kind of surprised that I knew where Sierra Leone was. So it's

like, well, it's not Morocco, so, yes, I'm aware of the geography of the continent.

By the way, africans, they have the same problem that you've got

oh, my God. You got people from Liberia,

and they'll yell about how they're not South African or Kenyan. Like, they're like, every

single person in Hollywood is Kenyan. That's not me. Give me a break

or Nigerians. Nigerian. Nigerians. Don't get me

started. Okay.

But I was having a discussion. He was like he asked

me, do you ever feel a need to go back to

Africa? And I said, go back. To what?

Like, I gotta ask an Irish person who's like third

generation Irish, do you feel a need to go back to Ireland? For what?

For Guinness and to kiss a bridge? What are we doing here?

Right? No, I was born here.

This is the place. This

is the Alamo, and this is it. This is the thing.

This is the whole thing. I don't know where else I where else

I would there's there's no place else to go. This is this is the this

is it. So I

well, case in point. We're

gonna we're gonna we're gonna further peel the onion

here with Tom a little bit on

this issue of Native Americans.

But we're going to approach it from a little bit of a different angle. Because

remember, I said it's hard to root for the bad guys and it's, it's it's

hard to hard to say something nice about the other side.

So we're gonna go to the hardest possible person to say something nice

about the friend of the show. Well, maybe not a friend of the

show. He's on a $20 bill. His name is Andrew

Jackson. If you

can't see the video, tom is smiling unironically right now.

Because after that entire thing that he just said, now I'm going to hit him

with Andrew Jackson. So let's go to the Gilder Lerman

Institute of American History. I pulled

this after some research. This is from the AP US.

History study guide. So this is AP us history. This is

what high school students are learning

about Andrew Jackson. I pulled directly from their

article. This is written by Matthew Warshaw, who is a professor

of history at Central Connecticut State University and author

of Andrew Jackson in Context, published in 2009. And Andrew Jackson

in the politics of martial law, nationalism, civil liberties and

partisanship. 2006. And I quote

directly from Matthew Washer. In

1860, biographer James Parton concluded that Andrew

Jackson was, quote, a most law defying, law

obeying citizen unquote. Such a statement is obviously

contradictory, yet it accurately captures the essence of the famous or infamous

Jackson. Without question, the 7th president was a man of contradictions.

To this day, historians have been unable to arrive at accepted conclusions about his

character or impact on the nation. Was he, as Robert Remini has

argued across the pages of more than a dozen books, the Great Leader and Symbol

of a Burgeoning mass Democracy? Or was Jackson merely a

vainglorious bully with no vision for the nation, reacting in

response to his own sensitive pride, as Andrew Burstein

and others have insisted? There is much that one

can look at in Jackson's life when attempting to arrive at conclusions. In

particular, his relationship with the law and. Constitution offers significant

window into his worldview. Whether it was illegally declaring

martial law in New Orleans, invading Spanish Florida, and executing British

citizens, removing federal deposits from the bank of the United States, or questioning the

supreme court's authority in Worceschester versus Georgia, jackson acted

in a manner that was at times distinctly illegal, yet widely hailed by supporters as

being in the nation's best interest. And before we conclude that this support

was partisan banter bestowed by his own

Democratic Party, we must remember that historians and

legal scholars to this day have wrestled with the larger ideological and constitutional meaning

of Jackson's beliefs and actions. One thing is certain

jackson had no qualms about overstepping the law, even the Constitution, when he

believed that the very survival of the nation required it. Moreover,

this perspective remains at the very heart of the debate. In a post

911 America, the essential question stands can a

leader violate the law in order to ultimately save

it and the nation?

Jackson's ideological conviction about the flexible nature of the law and the

Constitution in the face of dangers confronting the still fledgling nation can be seen in

many subsequent Jacksonian battles. When President

Jackson confronted the bank of the United States in 1832, he did so with the

belief that it was a corrupt fiscal monster threatening the nation's

economic security. He not only vetoed the bank's recharter, which was within

his right as Chief executive, but went a step further by removing federal deposits

even after Congress had deemed them safe. Jackson transferred one

Secretary of the treasury and fired another in order to secure the deposit

removals. His actions were questionable, if not completely

illegal, and the Senate censured him by making a notion, a notation in

their journal. They didn't attempt impeachment for lack of

support. Other legal conflicts surfaced.

Jackson allegedly defied the Supreme Court over Worcesterster versus

Georgia 1832, announcing, and

I quote, john Marshall has made his decision.

Now let him enforce it. Close quote.

The case revolved around Georgia's attempt to apply state laws to Cherokee

lands. The court had ruled against Georgia's authority to do so, and

Jackson, dedicated to Indian removal, allegedly challenged

Marshall. Although there was little evidence to support the above quotation, it

certainly sounds like Jackson. Nonetheless, the case required nothing of

Jackson and was ultimately settled out of court. The fact remained,

however, that in this case and in McCullough versus Maryland, 1819,

when it was ruled that the bank of the United States was in fact constitutional,

jackson challenged the court's authority as the final arbiter. As

President, Jackson believed that his authority to deem what was constitutional

equaled the Supreme Courts

there's a couple of core things in there, and

like I said, I'm poking tob on this a little bit. This may be the

first departure on the podcast that we have.

I think

Jackson was a flawed man, just like anybody else.

I think that he was a human being just like anybody else. I

think he had his good days, and I think he had his bad days, and

I think he probably had more bad days than good days. I also think that

he was a man of his time. He was not a man

of 2023. He was a man of the

19th century.

The core question here, which is raised in this piece

about Jackson, is can a leader violate the law in order to ultimately save

it? And the nation?

Does does a

does a does a president in our system, does the executive

have a right, or have the or should

the Executive have the temerity to

tell the Supreme Court where to go if

they don't want to do something?

We haven't never resolved this tension. And to Tom's

point, the issues that were brought up in Worcesterster v.

Georgia that specifically related to Georgia's attempt to apply state law

to Cherokee Lance could have been resolved by presidents before

Jackson. But the can was kicked down the road

until it eventually met an immovable

object known as Andrew Jackson's. Will

we live under the Constitution? We don't live under a monarchy,

but sometimes we have leaders who behave as if they were monarchs, from mayors

and governors to legislators and presidents.

The civil magistrate under the Republican form of government has the right to

choose to ignore the leader, follow the leader, or even, in the

case of the south, rebel against the leader.

I'm not going to ask Tom, what should we

think about Jackson? I think he's going to tell us that anyway.

Instead, what I'm going to do is ask Tom,

how do you put a leader, like, in the Jacksonian

mold? How do you keep him in the box?

How do you wrangle that guy?

Because you talked about well, talked about the chiefs. Right. I

want to go back to this. I want to draw the parallel. Right. So you

talked about how the Founding Fathers borrow the idea of a tripart government

from Native American culture. Okay.

How often did those chieftain women

run across a chief who was just like, yeah, that's cute?

I think you have to talk about some foundational things first. Right. So

again, you're talking

1870 ish 70

somewhere around there? 75. When

Franklin took his Cohorts up to the Honda

Shoney people, the Salagi down in the

Carolinas in Georgia, you're talking 50 plus

years later. I think there's some things you need

to have your listeners understand

if they don't already, about that environment down

there. Right. Number one, which was so

Jackson was first elected in 1929 sorry,

18 1829. Right. 1829 to 1837.

I believe he served two terms. So in 1829, his

first course of action was not to go right

after them. Right, right. His first course of action, believe it or not, was

relatively civil by comparison. He essentially

dissected the Cherokee of the Salehi people

into four essential chief hoods

and then convinced the chiefs of those four

that their old ways weren't good enough, that they needed to

act more like the government they were dealing with, so

that they were in principle.

They. Were basically led to believe that they could not operate that way

anymore. Okay, then

they were convinced that the whole concept of land

ownership again, you got to remember, natives didn't have the same concept of land ownership

until they did. And Jackson was the one who really

pushed that onto the sale

people. Well, it wasn't just the sale, too, by the way. It was

choctaw. And there was a couple of other tribal affiliations that were in there. So

I don't want to exclude them, especially if any of my

brethren and arms are of those nations. So I do

recognize it was not just the Selagi, so please forgive that part. But anyway but

this particular case was specifically the Selagi that they

divided into these four chiefs. Chiefhoods

Jackson convinced three of those chiefs to basically

just give up and sell them the land and become

part of the Cog and all that other stuff.

That's part of what Worcester v. Georgia was about.

Not all of it, but part of it, which was, we should not have

enforced this land ownership on them, and we're basically forcing

our ways and thoughts onto them. And Jackson was like,

well, this is the way we're doing it because this is now part of the

United States. Because if you remember, at that time, they had already moved a little

bit westward. It was like

assimilate or die kind of mentality. But

Jackson didn't present it that way. Right. Jackson presented it in a way that

said, we're going to make them feel like they're part of us, and then we're

going to push them out because we're going to just take the land and we're

going to give them fair market value. We're going to do the whole eminent domain

thing. And there was all this it was

like a Monopoly chessboard. It was like Monopoly, but not like

there was not payment, but not so now the

Salagh are split today into two bands. You have the Western

Band Cherokee that are in Oklahoma. That's where the Removal

Act was putting them. But you have the Eastern Band Cherokee that stayed in North

Carolina. They basically said, you want us, come get us. You want to take us

off our land, you come get us off our they pulled an Andrew Jackson on

him. They said, yeah, that's all well and good that you think you want to

do this now? Come get us. And he just couldn't he couldn't muster the

support, the strength, the physical

ineptitude that it would have taken to remove them from the hills of North Carolina

because, well, let's face it, they knew the hills better than they did.

They were never going to catch them. They were never going to grab them, move

them, whatever. So they just gave up after a certain amount of time, I believe

it was 1850, where they just said, forget it, we're just going to leave them

be where they were, which is essentially when that whole

trilaters movement ended, was 1850. Right. So it went

from it signed 1830. It was

not really enforced for a few years because of all the

back and forth in courts and all that stuff. And that whole settlement, quote, unquote,

out of court, that was the settlement that I'm talking about, where they

just basically convinced the other three chiefs that you own this land now,

and we want to buy it from you. There's this thing called eminent domain, so

you don't have a choice, but we're going to try to give you and by

the way, we're going to give you the same equity land out in a nice

neighborhood out in Oklahoma. I know you haven't seen it, but trust us, it's really

nice. It's Oklahoma.

I don't want to knock any listers from Oklahoma, by the way. It's a fine

state. It's fine. Oh, yeah. No, I liked right.

I lived in Nebraska for a while, not Oklahoma, but to me, they're never

mind. Anyway. We'Ve already

irritated enough people. But

then in the same breath, they were like, oh, and by the way, we're going

to pick up some of your brethren on the way. So it's not just you.

We're going to take the whole lot of you and we're going to give you

your own. This is going to be yours. He just

basically bullied them into it, but

that's what the settlement was. So he

wanted John Marshall to go ahead, and you said this was

unconstitutional. Good luck to you to try to stop me from doing

it anyway, because he knew he was going to do it. He knew he was

going to be able to do it. He knew he was going to succeed in

it. The part that I have a problem with, too, and we could talk about

Jackson Moore or whatever, but I still have a problem with

the guy who comes after him, has an opportunity to

stop this nonsense because John Marshall already said it was not

constitutional, and he didn't. So Martin Van Buren just said,

I'm just going to go with it. I was going to go with the flow.

I'm just going to let it happen. It's already in process, so

there's no point in stopping it. Right. So this is

leaders do this all the time, though. You get a really strong

personality. I've read some things about

Jackson not deeply, but I've read some things about him.

Guy was, I mean,

well, let me put it to you this way. He was the

kind of guy who would duel on a regular basis. Yeah.

And he had no problem shooting another dude in the street.

He was just going to take you out. Right. And I think

people, even of his time underestimated how much of a

I believe the modern term would be thug, how much of a thug he really

was. And it's sort of this

dynamic of, oh, gosh,

this is a long way around, but it doesn't matter. I was reading a review

of Charles not a review, but I was reading

the biography, a biographical sketch that was written about an author named

Charles Portis who wrote the book True

Grit back in the day. And he just recently

passed away. And the person was

describing I got to look it up and find it. But the person was

describing the character Maddie

Ross in True Grit. And the way that

Maddie Ross was described

in the article and I'll bring it up here in just a minute kind of

relates to Andrew Jackson. Like, occasionally you will have

leaders, I think about leaders in fiction, right.

Most notably, maybe the leader in the father in the show

Secession. Right. Which is really just King Lear, but in reverse.

Right. You'll have those leaders who

are just. So.

Morally single minded. I'll frame it that way. That's

kind of the best way to sort of think about it, right?

Morally single minded. Yeah.

You get a person like Jackson who comes along

and here's the quote. I wanted to get it. It's from the Point magazine.

It's called old Weird America. I was just reading it. The thing about Charles

Porter basically or try not Charles Porter, sorry, Charles Portiss, the

author of True Grit, basically saying that he could never have had a career

now because we don't like weird things like everything to be commodified and

corporatized. But the line in here that's really genuine,

that applies to Andrew Jackson is this and

he's describing Maddie Ross. He says, Maddie is an irresistible force in a

world of pushovers who have mistaken themselves for removable objects.

Okay, that's a great line. That is a great line.

And you think about it, that's

Jackson. Like, we tend to think of people in

the early 19th century in America as being rough and ready and

pilgrim. But there were just as many weak people and

pushovers there as then as there are now. And Jackson

just realized that he was in a world full of

pushovers for his time. And they

think that they're removable objects like the Supreme Court. He

looked in Marshall's face and he took his measure and he found him wanting.

He just did. And I think he did that to a lot of folks.

But you do have strong leaders that are like that. Usually it's the

founder, right? The Steve Jobs type or even the Bill

Gates type. But then the guy who comes in behind you,

what's his name? Balmer and Microsoft

or Tim Cook winds up not

being that person. And so you saw that in the transition

from Jackson to Van Buren. But

that does get me back to my original thought, which thank you for providing the

context for our listeners on the Trail of Tears, and we'll discuss more of

this when we talk about burying My Heart at Wounded Knee. We're going to get

into that in the upcoming months on the

podcast. We're going to read that a little bit further down the

line because I really do want to delve into that very deeply and pull

some of that apart, because I do think there's valuable lessons for leaders in there.

Plus, it's just history that doesn't get talked about nearly often enough.

How do you keep a guy like that, who's that irresistible

force, how do you build struck if they're not even

going to pay attention to the word, right? If you've got chiefs who are just

not even going to pay attention to the old ladies, what would happen if a

chief didn't pay attention to any of the old ladies?

How are they going to move him? Well, that's a

grown man. How are you going to move that grown man? Are you going to

get go, other grown men to move that grown man out? Essentially, yeah.

Okay. All right. You got to

remember, too, we were a matriarchal society to begin with, right?

So that chief would not have argued that.

I'm not suggesting that there was nobody who thought of themselves as

an immovable force, but

that version of a check and balance was

legit. Because think about this, right?

The women that are coming to you are your wife's

mother's or your wife's mother, your wife's aunt,

you have to go to sleep sometime. You're sleeping in the same bed as this.

I'm sorry, but I'm only going to push

so far with that scenario because I want to wake up the next morning.

I don't want to wake up saying, a two brute, whatever,

right? Which, by the way, Julius Caesar's wife did try to keep him from

going to heading on

down to the Senate there. She knew.

But anyway.

Plus the other thing, too, that I think that we take for

granted sometimes I see this a

lot, especially in court, right? So you see

this in court all the time. You have opposing counsel, right? You have these

two people. They're on opposite sides of this fight.

Not to get too personal, but I've been through a divorce, so I'm speaking from

experience here. My divorce attorney, I want them to hate that

other divorce attorney. I want them to try to win. I want them try to

fight. And then I go outside and I see them going out for a drink,

and they're hanging out, and I'm like, what the hell,

right? So

there's a weird dynamic that happens in our courtrooms and in our Senate, in

our House, where they'll battle each other. They'll

throw stones at each other. And I swear to God, once those doors close and

the public isn't looking, they're all chumming it up

because they have to put on a show of something for their constituents,

but I just really get the feeling they don't care about us as much as

we think they do or we want them to. And I think that's kind of

back to your point. It was harder to see at back then,

right? So Andrew Jackson gets elected president, and he's like, Finally, I made it.

Hey, look, my I made it, right? Like I'm here now. No one's going to

knock me down because I'm just going to do whatever I want. And I don't

care what the public sees, because quite honestly, we don't see anything back then.

Took us six months to get a letter to California, whatever.

Whereas today's, day and age, we think it's a little different.

We think it's a little different because the age of social media, access to information

so much faster. But quite honestly, I still don't think they care.

I don't think they care as much as we think they do or as much

as we want them to. Well, and that's the separation between the

politics of leadership and the

actual act of leading. Yes.

Right. Those are two separate things, which also must be separated from

a third thing, which is the act of making

law. And we mix those

three things up together and we think that those three things are removable

objects. I'm going to close

or maybe put the ellipsis on this episode, because

we're at the end here. I'm going to put an ellipsis on this episode. I'm

going to put three dots at the end,

and in going towards those three dots, I'm going to quote from

Proverbs 23. Some wisdom, by the way, from one of the

wisdom books in the Bible.

23 one, actually. When you when thou I

love the thou's, when thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider

diligently what is before thee and put a

knife to thy throat. If thou be a man given to appetite, be

not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat.

I think that's pretty good advice. And then

Proverbs 24, verse one, be not

thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them, for their

heart studyth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief.

I think that's a good place to put the Ellipsis.

I want to thank Tom for coming on our episode today.

Coming back to our episode today. Hopefully we'll see him next

month. Going to go offline, see if we've driven him

off. Nah, he'll be back next month.

We'll be getting into more of some of the topics that we've discussed

here. The role of the civil magistrate, the role of the Constitution and

leadership. And what is all this mean for

people in the midst of our third turning, I

think, amidst the beginning of something that's happening in

America. Once again, thank you, everybody,

for listening to the leadership lessons from the Great Books podcast. With

that, we're out.